


Underestimated and Impatient Little Girl (Raising Her Hand)

by lalaietha



Series: Ten Thousand Things [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She'd seen the fight. At least, she'd seen that an almighty and epic Agni Kai was <i>happening</i>, somewhere beyond the buildings she could see through her (barred) window. Everyone in the city had to have seen it, because blue and red flame twisting around each other and clawing up at the sky and leaving streaks of light on the overcast it didn't seem like someone with eyes could miss, and even the people without eyes would notice everyone else shouting about it. And blue flame meant Azula, and there was precisely one firebender Mai could think of that would want to fight Azula and that Azula would bother with the formality for.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Underestimated and Impatient Little Girl (Raising Her Hand)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [The White Lotus Lunar New Year Exchange](http://white-lotus.dreamwidth.org/tag/lunar+new+year+exchange).

It was nice to know that her entire family were still bootlicking toadies, regardless of who the boots belonged to. The noise had barely stopped before Mai's uncle stood in the doorway to her (fairly comfortable, but deathly, deathly boring) cell. He took a breath, and Mai raised an eyebrow.

"Let me guess," she said, pretending an indifference and a confidence that was, to be honest, _a complete lie_. "Zuko won."

Her uncle's teeth clicked shut. He stared at her, and eventually nodded mutely.

It took pretty much everything not to exhale in a rush or show just what a _relief_ that was, for every possible reason in the world. Which Mai totally refused to do. At least in front of her uncle.

She'd seen the fight. At least, she'd seen that an almighty and epic Agni Kai was _happening_ , somewhere beyond the buildings she could see through her (barred) window. Everyone in the city had to have seen it, because blue and red flame twisting around each other and clawing up at the sky and leaving streaks of light on the overcast it didn't seem like someone with eyes could miss, and even the people without eyes would notice everyone else shouting about it. And blue flame meant Azula, and there was precisely one firebender Mai could think of that would want to fight Azula and that Azula would bother with the formality for. The thought made Mai's lips curve slightly. Azula would. She'd give in to her own stupid need to _win_ , and she'd have challenged him, instead of just killing him outright, this time.

After all, she thought in the very, _very_ back of her mind, Zuko had managed to steal Mai from her, and Azula happened to be the universe's sorest loser.

"In a manner of speaking," her uncle qualified, his voice a little strained, as Mai got to her feet. "He's with the royal physicians now."

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he said, pretty quickly, "He's fine! He's expected to fully recover, the Water-Tribe . . .girl . . .did something and got him on his feet."

Mai took a deep breath, and didn't yell at him or punch him in the face, thanks to a lifetime of practice at not showing anyone what she felt when she didn't want them to see. The important part of her uncle's gabble could be summed up as: Ozai had to be gone (or he'd never dare be here), Azula had to be done (or he'd never dare be here), and he said Zuko was alive and would be okay. And, obviously, _most important of all_ , Mai didn't have to be in this Agni-scorched cell anymore.

"Come on," she said to her uncle, walking past him. "We're going to my parents' house to get my things." Her hands itched for her darts and her knives, and she wasn't going to wait a _second_ longer than she had to before she had them back and right where they were supposed to be. "And you're going to explain everything on the way there."

 

Her parents weren't at the house. Fortunately. Seeing as between them Zuko and the Avatar had apparently picked up the whole world anyone in her family understood and shattered it all over the palace paving stones, her parents' panic would have been . . .annoying. Her uncle's apprehension was annoying enough. Nothing like realizing the traitor you were threatening and almost got killed last month was about to become your Fire Lord to make you worry about your job prospects, Mai supposed. And life prospects.

She could have reassured him that Zuko wasn't about to start a bureaucratic purge of everyone who'd ever been mean to him (if only because that meant there'd be no bureaucracy _left_ ), but she didn't. She didn't really want to talk about it right now.

The Avatar had bounced the Fi - Ozai, she corrected her mind, around the Earth Kingdom coast, then beat him up, did something to him that took his firebending away, and finished it off by _raising the ocean_ , temporarily, to put the fires out. Before putting it back. Meanwhile, three of the Avatar's friends had managed to destroy most of the airship fleet. There were very strange reports coming in from the units in the Earth Kingdom itself.

And finally, Zuko had shown up here with the Water-Tribe girl, announced that he'd be Fire Lord instead of her, and that was when everyone had run for their lives. When they'd come back, Zuko had been hurt but on his feet, the Water-Tribe girl had been uninjured and tending to some of the people who hadn't run for their lives fast enough, most of the palace-complex had been at least scorched if not burned half away, and Azula -

Mai wasn't sure she believed what he said about Azula. She slid the last of her darts home, shook out her sleeves and felt the familiar weight and balance of everything where it was supposed to be. "Where is she?" she demanded of her uncle. He looked startled.

"The princess?" he asked. Mai rolled her eyes, but her back was to him, so he wouldn't see.

"Yes," she replied, twitching one last fold into place and turning to him. "I want to see her."

Her uncle eyed her, uncertainly. "I would have thought - " he said, but Mai cut him off, impatient.

"You said Zuko's with the physicians," she replied, shortly. "I'll talk to him in the morning. I want to see Azula now. Take me to where they're keeping her."

She wasn't really interested in having her reunion with Zuko be when she had to fight a bunch of doctors for his attention, or in the middle of the night when he was stupid with exhaustion anyway. The morning would be soon enough. But something in her balked, hard, at what he said about Azula. Something in her flatly refused to believe he could be right.

That, Mai needed to see for herself. She folded her arms and glared at her uncle while he tried to find some way to argue with her, and eventually deflated under her gaze and nodded. "Very well, Mai," he said.

That was why she'd never liked him. He was _family_. But he was also a very particular kind of coward, and Mai couldn't respect that at all.

 

He'd told her the truth, though.

He took her to the Prison Tower, which was apparently the only place anyone felt secure enough to put the vanquished princess. He took Mai there, but he wouldn't go in. She raised an eyebrow at him, shrugged, and gestured for one of the guards to go in front with the light.

Mai hadn't been here before. She just followed the people who were here all the time, and watched them get more and more nervous as they took Mai closer to what she wanted to see. One of them stopped at the end of the hall. The other set his jaw as he walked forward and gestured to a barred window in the door.

The place was cold and dank. The walls were all rock, the only accents metal. Mai thought there were probably less stupid ways to light the place than with fire - she'd have to think about that later - but she supposed maybe some of the guards were pathetic enough they needed the help with their own firebending. She thought that, as she stepped up to the window and looked in.

After a moment, she said, "Open the door." The guard looked at her nervously, but something in her face must have told him not to argue. Mai appreciated that. He didn't really seem like the kind of person who needed extra holes in his body because he was stupid enough to argue with her right now.

He opened the door, and Mai stepped in.

Azula's hands were chained behind her back. Her hair was loose and ragged. She sat on the bottom of the cage on her knees, her head bowed over, her hands working against the metal that held him. She breathed hard, and fast, and each breath sounded like it tore itself between a sob and a laugh. Her clothing was torn and rent from the Agni Kai and whatever else had happened.

 _She . . .just went insane,_ Mai's uncle had told Mai, as she'd put metal back where it belonged, where she hadn't had it since Ty Lee stopped Azula from killing her. _After Fire Lord Ozai left, she dismissed almost all the palace servants, the Royal Firebenders, her Dai Li agents, everyone. Nobody was left in the palace but a few surviving servants and the Fire Sages. And when the duel was over, she was . . . ._

She was, thought Mai, looking down at the remnants of her princess, like this. Mai watched Azula, dispassionately, until Azula seemed to notice for the first time there was someone else in the cell, and looked up.

Saw Mai. Took a moment, Mai thought, to _recognize her_.

Then Azula screamed, and lunged at the bars. As best she could, from the ground, and with the chains. The scream came with fire on her breath; Mai's uncle had mentioned that, too. But the Comet was gone now, and there was just Azula left, Azula without her mind, and the fire stopped well short of Mai. And the bars and the chains stopped her from getting to Mai with her hands, and in the end, Azula collapsed sobbing again, curled in on herself.

Mai just watched her, and found it surprisingly hard to think. There probably wasn't a worse end for her, for Azula, really. Not if there was anything left of Mai's Azula to remember it, to know it was there. It would probably be a lot kinder to kill her, and if you'd asked Azula a month ago - if you could get Azula of a month ago to believe she could ever fail, ever be beaten - she probably would have asked for death instead.

For a moment, for just a second, the thought came halfway to action. One of Mai's daggers was already in her hand.

Then she stopped, and slid it back into its wrist-sheath.

Stopped, slid it back, and looked one last time. Engraved everything on her memory, every detail of this. The cell and the dim light; the iron of bars and chain-links and wristlets. The sounds, and the shape of Azula on the floor.

Then Mai turned around and walked out of the cell. Closed the door behind her with her own hands and turned away from it, away from the guard and the light without saying a word. Not a word when he followed her, not a word when the other one rejoined them (the coward), not a word when she stepped back out of the Tower to where her uncle waited (the coward twice, three times over).

"Take me back to the palace," Mai said, short and flat, and her uncle wisely said nothing.

Once they got there, Mai thought, she'd wash her hands.


End file.
